What a cool bottle weekend I had last week! I swear, I almost don't have to look for bottles .... it seems bottles look for me.
The past month or so I've been tracking down lots of different old abandon towns and settlements (old saw mill towns and train stops). I found more places to dig than I can shake my hiking stick at!
So, last weekend I decided to take a break from bottle digging. As many people know, the north east USA has gotten lots of rain! Record amounts. So much so, a ditch along my house (where the roof drips) washed out. Laying in the ditch was what I believe is the neck to a fairly old bottle, maybe an old larger medicine. Then I walked around the house a small old brick wall under my outdoor steps was washed out, and behind that was the bottom of an old medicine! Both appear to be older than my house (1909).
That was Friday night. Saturday I decided to go fishing, to a remote area that not too many people fish. While I'm wading down the stream, I look over and see what I thought was a bottle sticking out of the bank .... and sure enough it was! Broken, but a bottle none the less! So I put the fishing gear down and I spend the rest of the day pulling bottles out of the bank. So many, I couldn't carry them all (mostly commons and slicks) so I carefully placed them in my fishing net and carried a net full of bottles back to my bike (I travel by motorcycle) and they all survived the ride home crammed into the motorcycle saddlebags!
SO, since I was TRYING to escape bottle digging for the weekend ..... Unsuccessfully I might add, I decided to go kayaking with a couple friends ..... with my fishing pole to work in the much needed fishing trip I felt I was "owed" from the day before.
Certainly, out in a kayak with only my fishing gear there was no chance of me bottle digging on Sunday! Or so I thought!
Now, bear with me ... I have to set the stage properly! ....... It's all weather related!
It started Friday night when my yard washed out more than it has in past years, and I found two partial old bottles right next to my house. Then Saturday I was fishing a washed out curve of a creek that cut into a bank that reviled a nice cache of old bottles. But Sunday I was thrown a real unexpected curve!
The area my friends wanted to kayak was a "back bay" of the Allegheny Reservoir or the Kinzua Reservoir or Kinzua Lake. When it was built in the mid 1960's it flooded over several towns. The only way to dig most of them is to scuba dive (which I have often done), as all the best, bigger towns are underwater.
But this trip would be much different!
Since the whole center of the USA is experiencing flooding conditions, especially down south, like the Ohio River and the Mississippi, all the upstream reservoirs have been "holding back" and storing water to minimize their outflow.
The Kinzua Reservoir hasn't been this deep since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. It's at it's second deepest level ever. The bay we decided to kayak, between Red Bridge and an old town called Springer was way out of it's banks. So we got to kayak through was is normally woods! A forest that contained a mill and a small settlement, and ironically, a glass factory. I had no idea I would be finding bottles on a kayak/fishing trip!
As it turned out, the flotsam was incredible! It's mind boggling how much debris floats in an area that has not been flooded since 1972!. We paddled through miles and miles of floating debris among trees. Then I spotted my first floating bottle! It was an old Heinz ketchup bottle with some debris in the end like it was corked with peat moss! Floating hight and dry in the flood water! After I found that bottle, I started looking harder and found other bottles and even some floating pieces of bottles. I found a cobalt blue medicine without the neck and a heavy brown medicine that was just the bottom 2/3rds. Both upside down bobbing in the debris field.
Then, in the shallow water near what was now a "shore line" about a mile inland from what was the shoreline, I found a bottle that I can best describe as a "smaller milk". It's green or a little on the blue green side.
And just like the day before I was using my fishing net! This time to scoop bottles out of the water! How often has this ever happened? How many other bottles diggers have gone out in flood area with a net and netted bottles?
I did cover several miles (trolling for fish originally!), but you just gotta wonder if I found some bottles floating in the water, how many are buried in the ground that couldn't float?
NEXT WEEKEND, I'm going to TRY to not dig any bottles! Perhaps I should stay indoors! LOL!
Here are some photos:
The past month or so I've been tracking down lots of different old abandon towns and settlements (old saw mill towns and train stops). I found more places to dig than I can shake my hiking stick at!
So, last weekend I decided to take a break from bottle digging. As many people know, the north east USA has gotten lots of rain! Record amounts. So much so, a ditch along my house (where the roof drips) washed out. Laying in the ditch was what I believe is the neck to a fairly old bottle, maybe an old larger medicine. Then I walked around the house a small old brick wall under my outdoor steps was washed out, and behind that was the bottom of an old medicine! Both appear to be older than my house (1909).
That was Friday night. Saturday I decided to go fishing, to a remote area that not too many people fish. While I'm wading down the stream, I look over and see what I thought was a bottle sticking out of the bank .... and sure enough it was! Broken, but a bottle none the less! So I put the fishing gear down and I spend the rest of the day pulling bottles out of the bank. So many, I couldn't carry them all (mostly commons and slicks) so I carefully placed them in my fishing net and carried a net full of bottles back to my bike (I travel by motorcycle) and they all survived the ride home crammed into the motorcycle saddlebags!
SO, since I was TRYING to escape bottle digging for the weekend ..... Unsuccessfully I might add, I decided to go kayaking with a couple friends ..... with my fishing pole to work in the much needed fishing trip I felt I was "owed" from the day before.
Certainly, out in a kayak with only my fishing gear there was no chance of me bottle digging on Sunday! Or so I thought!
Now, bear with me ... I have to set the stage properly! ....... It's all weather related!
It started Friday night when my yard washed out more than it has in past years, and I found two partial old bottles right next to my house. Then Saturday I was fishing a washed out curve of a creek that cut into a bank that reviled a nice cache of old bottles. But Sunday I was thrown a real unexpected curve!
The area my friends wanted to kayak was a "back bay" of the Allegheny Reservoir or the Kinzua Reservoir or Kinzua Lake. When it was built in the mid 1960's it flooded over several towns. The only way to dig most of them is to scuba dive (which I have often done), as all the best, bigger towns are underwater.
But this trip would be much different!
Since the whole center of the USA is experiencing flooding conditions, especially down south, like the Ohio River and the Mississippi, all the upstream reservoirs have been "holding back" and storing water to minimize their outflow.
The Kinzua Reservoir hasn't been this deep since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. It's at it's second deepest level ever. The bay we decided to kayak, between Red Bridge and an old town called Springer was way out of it's banks. So we got to kayak through was is normally woods! A forest that contained a mill and a small settlement, and ironically, a glass factory. I had no idea I would be finding bottles on a kayak/fishing trip!
As it turned out, the flotsam was incredible! It's mind boggling how much debris floats in an area that has not been flooded since 1972!. We paddled through miles and miles of floating debris among trees. Then I spotted my first floating bottle! It was an old Heinz ketchup bottle with some debris in the end like it was corked with peat moss! Floating hight and dry in the flood water! After I found that bottle, I started looking harder and found other bottles and even some floating pieces of bottles. I found a cobalt blue medicine without the neck and a heavy brown medicine that was just the bottom 2/3rds. Both upside down bobbing in the debris field.
Then, in the shallow water near what was now a "shore line" about a mile inland from what was the shoreline, I found a bottle that I can best describe as a "smaller milk". It's green or a little on the blue green side.
And just like the day before I was using my fishing net! This time to scoop bottles out of the water! How often has this ever happened? How many other bottles diggers have gone out in flood area with a net and netted bottles?
I did cover several miles (trolling for fish originally!), but you just gotta wonder if I found some bottles floating in the water, how many are buried in the ground that couldn't float?
NEXT WEEKEND, I'm going to TRY to not dig any bottles! Perhaps I should stay indoors! LOL!
Here are some photos:
]
